Intel to release Thunderbolt developer kit this quarter

Intel revealed on Tuesday that developer kits for its new Thunderbolt high-speed interconnect, which made its debut on Apple's early 2011 MacBook Pros, will be made available later this quarter.

Apple and Intel partnered up in February to introduce the Thunderbolt technology on a new line of MacBook Pros. Intel later suggested that Apple had a full year head start on its competitors.

Later this quarter, however, Intel will attempt to level the playing field with the release of developer kits for the technology, Macworld reports. According to an Intel spokesman, those kits could reduce the amount of time needed by device makers to bring Thunderbolt products to market.

Intel has already lined up several additional partners to help drive adoption of Thunderbolt, including LaCie and Western Digital.

Vendors began showing off new products that take advantage of Thunderbolt at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas earlier this week. For example, AJA, BlackMagic and Matrox all have Thunderbolt-capable breakout boxes on display at the show.

Apple is expected to release a new version of Final Cut Studio at an NAB side event late Tuesday.

Canon executives have also expressed interest in the technology, though the company has yet to formally announce any related products. Sony and HP are also reportedly looking into bringing Thunderbolt to their laptops.

Thunderbolt pairs the high-speed PCI Express serial interface with the Apple-developed Mini DisplayPort to provide both data and video through a single port with I/O performance of up to 10Gbps. Originally codenamed 'Light Peak,' Intel had planned to use optical cabling but switched to copper wire because of cost constraints.

As adoption of the standard begins to ramp up, Apple is looking to build out its in-house Thunderbolt team. Last week, the Mac maker posted job listings for a "Thunderbolt Software Quality Engineer" and a "Thunderbolt Firmware/Software Engineer."

Wouldn't a KICKSTARTER project to design a TB ... ANYTHING get SO SO SO much attention?!?! If any of you know of any really smart circuit board engineers.. Perhaps you might get them to look into doing something really cool and get it funded...

Thunderbolt pairs the high-speed PCI Express serial interface with the Apple-developed Mini DisplayPort to provide both data and video through a single port with I/O performance of up to 1 Gbps.

Um... Don't you mean 10 Gbps?

It'd also be great to see more outlets talking about the bidirectional capability... 10Gbps is pretty great all on its own but 10Gbps full-blast, both directions is just plain awesome - like FireWire on super-roids.

It'd also be great to see more outlets talking about the bidirectional capability... 10Gbps is pretty great all on its own but 10Gbps full-blast, both directions is just plain awesome - like FireWire on super-roids.

Well given that TB is quite similar to an entire PCI bus (an actualy bus not a single slot) on a single cable all of this and so much more is very very possible. Just imagine it.. Any conceivable PCI card can be made external WITHOUT a speed hit normally associated with such a move.

Hardcore gamers trying to do SLI and having to stress over PC power supply issues , heat, card headroom etc etc... Bye bye ... Hang as many TB based video cards with their own case and power supply... Also card designers wouldn't have to build their products based on PCI card size constraints.

Stick just one of these bad-boys on the back of a Mac mini and we finally have the xBox (headless Mac with pci slots) many of us have been wishing for... To the best of my knowledge nothing stands in the way of someone developing a bare enclosure with 5 or 6 pci slots and TB ports on the side.

Well given that TB is quite similar to an entire PCI bus (an actualy bus not a single slot) on a single cable all of this and so much more is very very possible. Just imagine it.. Any conceivable PCI card can be made external WITHOUT a speed hit normally associated with such a move.

Hardcore gamers trying to do SLI and having to stress over PC power supply issues , heat, card headroom etc etc... Bye bye ... Hang as many TB based video cards with their own case and power supply... Also card designers wouldn't have to build their products based on PCI card size constraints.

Stick just one of these bad-boys on the back of a Mac mini and we finally have the xBox (headless Mac with pci slots) many of us have been wishing for... To the best of my knowledge nothing stands in the way of someone developing a bare enclosure with 5 or 6 pci slots and TB ports on the side.

no TB is only like pci-e X4 and 1 video card is slowed down by a X4 link much less with the TB overhead and other stuff on the bus also I think you can't add video to the TB bus on the DP side midway.

2. the mini low end cpu / low ram can't not be fixed with TB. Also apple likes to have slow / small HDD in the mini and adding on over TB just uses up TB bandwidth VS e-sata that free bandwidth wise or fire wire that is on it's own bus.

also the mini with 1 TB port and on board video will have like 12 pci-e links unused and one with 2 TB ports / buses will have 8 unused.

better to have a video card on the x8 link and TB free for other stuff.